


It’s for people in relationships with the artist formerly known as Prince.

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [7]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23062609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: a.k.a. Where Did the AO3 Relationships Symbols Come From?
Series: March Meta Matters [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	It’s for people in relationships with the artist formerly known as Prince.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted: October 27, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/day/2019/10/27
> 
> Uploaded for day 7 of the March Meta Matters challenge.

  


Sometimes, design decisions involve a panel of experts, focus groups, and a public comment period. Sometimes, they involve five sleep-deprived nerds in a chatroom, trying to pick something by tomorrow so the tech stuff can progress.

I’ve seen a couple of people ask about “That enterprise-looking thing” that is the symbol for _Other Relationships_. As far as I recall, this is how those symbols got picked:

We wanted distinctive, visually striking symbols that look good in a tiny size and look different from one another. I think we may have had a preference for things that are in Unicode, even though those icons are .png, not text.

F/F, M/M: Given that these are ship categories on AO3, a [single gender symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_symbol) was deemed clear enough. (In another context, one might want two female symbols linked or two male symbols linked.)

M/F: There was some debate over whether this combo symbol read as heterosexuality or trans*, but there are some other common trans symbols in this vein, and this one does get used for heterosexuality outside of AO3.

These single-gender symbols are the [astrological symbols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_symbols) for Venus and Mars. That brought up the idea of using other astrological symbols for the other categories.

Other: That odd-looking symbol is the one for Uranus, a planet which governs Aquarius and symbolizes ~wacky shit~, including nonstandard sexualities.

Gen: That’s an astrological sun symbol. Why is it a good choice for gen? You got me there! Astrologically, this makes zero sense. I imagine we picked it because it’s visually clear and doesn’t look like a mutant version of these other symbols.

Multi: And this one, obviously, looks like multiple things and reuses the colors of the others.

—-

Incidentally, I think ‘multi’ was a terrible design decision. At the time, I remember delusionally thinking it made sense, but people who want to write a story that is both m/m and m/f or whatever just put both of those categories.

Of course, go back a couple of decades, and far fewer fics did cross over those boundaries. When I surveyed FFN, I found only a tiny handful of fics that weren’t clearly gen, het, slash, or femslash. So maybe I was still thinking in that mode when these decisions were being made (circa 2009?).

What I think we _ought_ to have done, and the way I personally use ‘Multi’ for my own work on AO3, is to have a mixed-sex OT3 and moresomes category. M/M/F and F/F/M are kind of their own genre in a lot of fandoms.

‘Other’ was conceived of as more of a masturbation and tentacle monsters category, from what I recall. Some people do use it for fic about humans with complicated gender situations, but that can feel too… well… othering for some.

—-

How would _you_ have designed the categories? What would you use for category symbols?


End file.
